A Packed Agenda Updated

If you ever wanted to see what a village council meeting is like in person, this coming Tuesday would be a prime night.

Active B is an annexation, rezoning, and special use for the Gilbert Park antennae array. WARNING: this baby is 138 pages long. It has complete diagrams and over head views and landscape proposals; the whole nine yards.The Plan Commission sent a negative recommendation, but staff recommends approval. The ParkDistrict moved the antennae back to the corner by the road, and the village staff and the PD sat down and figured out how they would get it approved.

Active C Special Use for a Telecommunications Tower at Hummer Park. WARNING: this baby is 90 pages long. It has complete diagrams and over head views and landscape proposals; the whole nine yards. The Plan Commission forwarded a negative approval, and staff recommends approval.

Council may or may not approve these. There is widespread negative resident input on both, and it has spurred resident discussion on what they feel is appropriate use of their park land. There will probably be some people there speaking against these items including Marge Earl, who picked up early on this issue, and maybe including Willis Johnson of Tivoli Enterprises (best movie theater ever), who owns M-1and B-1and 2 zoned property that is much better suited to the task.

I thought the Hummer Park flagpole was pretty innocuous but there was not one single resident comment in favor of these antennae.  Staff and PD supposedly worked this out.  We’ll see if council got the memo.

Active D Request to Cede Village’s Bond Cap Authority to the Illinois Housing Development Authority.

An ordinance has been prepared to cede the Village’s bond cap authority to the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) in the amount of $1,307,605 for the purposes of developing a mortgage program and/or Mortgage Credit Certificate program for first time homebuyers purchasing a home in Downers Grove.

The usual procedure is any applications up to the reserve deadline all go in the hopper and staff sorts through them for their best recommendation. After that date (May 1 I think) any left over bond cap is on a first come first serve basis, so there is reason to follow precedent and approve.

This may bring out some speakers for and against using bond cap for first time home buyers. Staff is making no recommendation either way on this, and is “leaving it up to the discretion of the Village Council.”

Staff not recommending either way is fairly rare, and this may be a “barometer” vote on where the council is at about housing right now. During the election, they were all in favor of moving forward on attainable housing. During the ad hoc Committee, not so much.

There will be an executive session, which I assume is the hearing, and then a reconvene for

MOT 00 -03312 Motion: Contract Status – Village Manager

Which should be the last of this matter. For now. Last week all three reporters stayed, as well as several interested citizens. It will probably be the same this week.